Woman Seated at Table 1919 - 1920

Max Weber made this woodcut of a woman at a table, and what grabs me is the way he’s wrangling with representation. The colour is all umber, like burnt toast, and he’s really pushing the flatness of the picture plane. Check out the texture! You can almost feel the grain of the wood, like he’s not trying to hide the process at all. Then there’s the way the figure is squeezed into the frame, like she’s barely contained. I mean, look at how her features are simplified – the long nose, the closed eyes – it's like a mask. The hand raised to her face, is she thinking, or is she hiding? That single gesture opens up a whole world of questions. Weber was part of that generation wrestling with how to represent modern life, and you see echoes of early Picasso and Matisse. But he brings his own flavor, that earthy palette, and the way he lets the medium speak. It's like he's saying, "Here I am, figuring it out as I go." And isn't that what art's all about?